STRUTATHON

Body Movin’

STRUTathon will take over the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts on Saturday, January 28, from 12pm-10pm. Tickets are available by visiting fringeworld.com.au or pica.org.au.

Since 2002 STRUT Dance has been the artistic hub for contemporary dance in Western Australia. The brainchild of Sue Peacock and Gaberielle Sullivan, STRUT aims to connect quality contemporary dance with audiences. Now, a decade since they first began, STRUT is celebrating their 10 year anniversary with a birthday party of a lifetime – a 10 hour marathon, or STRUTathon, celebrating low-fi, experimental short works choreographed by past and present STRUT members.
Artistic director Sue Peacock describes STRUTathon as not a “standard theatrical performance.” Alternative and informal, this wholly unique performance piece offers the audience the opportunity to act as a fly on the wall – coming and leaving as they please. “We’re doing 10 hours of non stop performance, which means that there’s actually three programs of work and they’re repeated three times – ABC ABC ABC – and it happens over a 10 hour period.”
“There’s one person I can think that might be crazy enough to sit there for 10 hours! I think for most people the idea is that you can come and go, so the way that it’s set up you can stay and watch the first program, then you can go out and have a bit a break, and skip a program then come back and watch the third one, and then see the second one the next time... so there’s all those kind of possibilities I guess in terms of the audience being able to watch it,” says Peacock.
Each program contains works from dancers and choreographers of vastly varied and different backgrounds. “Some are from much long standing members, quite experienced choreographers, and others are from quite new graduates,” says Peacock. “Claudia Alessi is doing a duet that I think is from about 2004 called Blind Date with Stephen Carlton, who is a very experienced performer in Perth. They’re both mature artists, and it’s more theatre based – the dancing in it is kind of a little bit nostalgic, light entertaining.
“In contrast to that there’s a work called Lace by Isabella Stone who’s a newer Strut member, and that work she presented last year, and it’s a dance work for four female dancers, so quite a different style – more pure movement.”
For Peacock, this event is a celebration of all that has made STRUT Dance unique and beautiful over the past decade, as well as the prelude to great things to come. “As I know there hasn’t been a dance thing in quite this format in Australia!,” she says. “We’re just looking forward to a really big year – we’ve got some great guests coming over, and there’s some really cool things happening in the second half of the year, so we’re sort of starting off with a bang and then continuing all year.”

_LEAH BLANKENDAAL